SustainYou

Biopact presents their report on Greenhouse gas Emissions balance for electricity power sources.  Check it out!

From: Biopact

Yesterday we had our first big snow storm in Minneapolis.  Saturday night we had nearly a foot dumped onto the city.  It was the sight of buried cars, stuck busses, neighbors meeting and helping each other.  Neighbors helping each other. 

In the morning I dug out my car and headed into the Fremont/Gerard alleyway.   Snow was everywhere! In our 2 acre block with 16 houses, 16 garages and many more cars, there was no room for a foot of snow.  There was plenty of room for neighborhood connections.  Read the rest of this entry »

A little over a year ago I had an idea, which with the guidance of some amazing friends and housemates became the Carbon Neutral Co-Op.

Last winter I was fighting between grad school in architecture & sustainable design and corporate energy work. I chose corporate energy work. I wanted to not lose sight of the values and ethics that were fostered by my mentors and friends at Carleton. I wanted to have the quest for sustainability remain a major part of my life. The Co-Op remained an idea until 3 beautiful people, Chris, Dana and Sonja-Mae agreed to live with me even before we knew where we were going to live. This started to make it seem financially plausible that it could work…
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This weekend is the last weekend of the Art Shanty Projects at medicine lake, Minnesota. It is a habitation gallery on a canvas of frozen ice.

My friend Peter created “The Cactus Conservatory – A place to engage the community in a conversation about sustainability, eco-friendly design and cactus.”

It was in this art shanty when it was -3 F outside that I looked between the cacti and saw the temp point to 93.JPG Peter’s shanty was the inspiration for the Greenhouse studio…..a studio to feed the body & mind and warm the soul with the sun.
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Our Home: Our Food: Our minds:

Our Homes:
For the most part, all new construction in the United States uses drywall to cover interior walls.  Drywall is simply gypsum, lime and other minerals sandwiched between two layers of paper.  While some of the mineral content is recycled, it is the highly processed paper that provides a feast for mold.  It is unknown how many children and families have suffered because of mold in their walls, but it is estimated that 2 in 3 homes have mold problems.  Several pieces of drywall installed just 5 years ago in the co-op basement had mold on the back and had to be thrown out.  We didn’t used to build this way.  Read the rest of this entry »

“Make sure when you do something you are doing it for the right reasons,” a wise, perceptive and humble man said to me last night. It was Dana’s celebration night last night. That rockstar just landed a great job at a rural land use planning (super exciting stuff — that is all way over my head. I’m sure she will tell you all about it).

What are the right reasons? I asked myself, am I doing everything to satisfy my own emotions? Is there such a thing as pure altruism and if it exists is that even a right reason for doing something? How can anyone tell what the right reason is if it is always dependent on an individual’s values?
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